Propaganda

Calling all FYIERS! I need your undivided attention for this matter of utmost importance. While this week’s show may manipulate your mind and leave you in a trance, you can bet your bottom dollar we are going to learn lots of useful English, laugh out loud and be spellbound through and through. That is, as long as you obey and consume. Join me, as we take a peek at the powerful weapon known as propaganda on this week’s episode of FYI.

Transcript

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calling all FYI I need your undivided attention for this matter of utmost importance while this week's show May manipulate your mind and leave you in a trance you can bet your bottom dollar we are going to learn lots of useful English laugh out loud and be Spellbound through and through that is as long as you obey and[Music] consume join me as we take a peek at the powerful weapon known as propaganda on this week's episode of[Music] FYI welcome to for your info English you got it you got it[Applause][Music][Applause][Applause][Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another edition of FYI I should say another exciting edition of FYI and today we're going to take a peek at propaganda to take a peek at as always we're going to kick off taking a look at our intro which is chalk full of million dooll words I think you say palones these are those words that when you use them you sound more eloquent and even native speakers are guilty of that I'm telling you you can get in the habit of using the same five adjectives nice cool awesome nice cool a awesome and repeat but I insist adjectives are the key to saying exactly what you want to say after all they are the words that describe everything I know I know I'm a language nerd I'm in love with words but I know that's something we all share in common our love of languages and our curiosity the fact that we're always hungry for more well this week's topic is quite interesting so let's take a look at our intro I said calling all FYI oh and by the way a special shout out to our FYI in Ireland and Argentina it's unbelievable but we keep charting in those countries so thank you thank you thank you for listening for spreading the word and make sure of course you rate the show give it five stars and leave a comment I started out by saying I need your undivided Ed attention oh man if I can remember how many times I heard that at the beginning of an assembly in school you know maybe the principal said it or one of your teachers please I need your undivided attention for this matter of utmost importantance that means it's really important but that's a great word there's an example of one of those words utmost Maxima then I said while this week's show May manipulate your mind mind and leave you in a trance so I think that's pretty self-explanatory but to leave you in a trance another way to say that is to hypnotize you I know the word sounds familiar I just want to make sure you know how to pronounce it to hypnotize then I said you can bet your bottom dollar and that means you can rest assured that we are going to learn lots of useful English as always laugh out loud as always and to be Spellbound and a spell is something that is cast on you there's a very famous song I Put a Spell on You I think in Spanish the translation would be so I hope you are Spellbound today I hope you are Spellbound through and through utterly completely thoroughly you say and then the next line is for our movie Buffs I said that is as long as you obey and consume I like that structure as long as it's a really good structure to know I'll go as long as I have money and to obey means to follow orders to not step out of line and to consume did anybody know the movie it came from it came from John Carpenter's classic horror film The they live and he's walking around the streets and he starts to see obey consume and all this propaganda in front of his face it's a classic scene from a cult movie and in the bonus part we'll take a look at this topic in movies even in literature Orwell comes to mind so we'll take a look at the pop culture aspect as well plus we'll take a look at examples of propaganda in history and we'll look at the father of propaganda Edward bernes he was the guy who made bacon and eggs popular and he also made it cool for women to smoke he made them feel liberated but we'll talk about that in the bonus part where we'll also take a look at many different Expressions we'll also play a game to see how well you know some of your favorite catchy slogans all that and much more in the bonus episode remember you can have access to a bonus episode every week all you have to do is join my Curious community over on patreon you can go to patreon.com Alberto Alonso you can also find the links in the show notes but if you are a curious cat if you are an English Explorer then this is the place for you you can also get PDF documents with all the vocabulary so you can study along and most importantly you can have class with me so if you like the way I teach here on the show well just imagine being in class with me yeah we sing we laugh but most importantly we learn so if you want to join my Curious Community go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and I'd like to send a shout out to each and every one of you keep up the great work as your teacher I can only say one thing I couldn't be prouder so a shout out to to all of you especially my super duper students Mara Javier Paco Roberto and Mila and my Interstellar students Garmin Lena Issa bakle David Jose Maria Patricio and Edgard every week we look forward to our classes together not just the students but me as the teacher I really enjoy our time together so what are you waiting for join our curious community over on patreon.com Alberto Alonso so let's take a peek at propaganda the power of persuasion because in essence what you're doing is you're persuading people to see things your way and we'll take a look at all the different techniques and kinds a little bit later but first let's define it according to Wikipedia propaganda is communication that is primarily used used to influence or persuade there's that word I said to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception so I think that's pretty self-explanatory I guess the word encourage alentar the rest of the words are pretty easy agenda synthesis perception it goes on to say or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented and loaded language are words such as Freedom democracy dream success these words that can often be ideas that make us feel a certain way about something cuz let's be honest we all know the Power of Words as a language learner you know that so they use words that evoke a certain response from people and obviously the response they're looking for they the people who are propagating the propaganda and can you believe it I'm 46 years old and I never stopped to think that the word propaganda had to do with propagar to propagate to spread and we'll take a look at the emology in just a moment let me just finish up here with the definition propaganda can be found in a wide variety of different contexts in the 20th century the English term propaganda was often associated with a manipulative approach sure it's coercing people to think like you or at least think the way you want them to think and ignore the facts you want them to ignore it goes on to say historically propaganda a had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions or ideologies I've heard that word pronounced ideology and ideology I say ideology because it's about ideas a wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages these changed as new technologies were invented including paintings cartoons I mean think about the paintings the king would hire a painter and he would make sure that that painter made him look favorable made him look good even if the King was a fat slob cartoons which we're going to take a look at in just a moment posters pamphlets films radio shows TV shows and websites and more recently in the digital age there are many new ways of disseminating propaganda people use Bots and algorithms I'm sorry I can't help it but every time I hear the word algorithm I think it's the algorithm of the night oh okay sorry you know I can't go an episode without singing and we'll talk a little bit about that too the new technology with memes and fake news misinformation and all that jazz cuz let's be honest this is a Hot Topic it's never been so pertinent going back to the etymology as we said propaganda is a modern Latin word I think as Spanish speakers you know it comes from propagar to be propagated to spread as we said but originally the word derived from a Congregation of the Catholic Church which was created in 1622 it was part of the Counter Reformation and they called it the congreg propaganda F the congregation for propagating the faith AKA propaganda and their activity or I should say their aim was to propagate the Catholic faith especially in non-catholic countries and just be careful with the pronunciation there it's not Catholic it's Catholic and it's not Cathedral it's Cathedral let's say that sentence it's a Catholic Cathedral it's a Catholic Cathedral AAL so from around the 1790s the term began to be used also for secular activities and in the mid 19th century it started to have a an uglier meaning when they started to use it in the political sphere and now as we see it's used all the time in the political sphere in advertising in Wartime in peace time I mean we are inundated with propaganda every day but where did did it all start well let's go back primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists for example the rise of Darius I to the Persian Throne well the story behind that is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda another striking example is the Roman Civil Wars or the Roman Empire in general and by the way if you haven't listened to the episode on the Roman Empire give it a listen it's epic but just think about one of the stories from the Roman Empire Octavian and Mark Anthony you know Mark Anthony sorry sorry I couldn't help it well these two characters blamed each other for many different things such as cruelty cowardice debauchery drunkenness so I guess this was an early form of slander to slander somebody is to say bad things about them to dirty or tarnish their name and now we can see common media propagating propaganda in news reports I mean just right there just the fact that you can turn on the news and you can instantly know which way they lean politically are they more left-wing are they more right-wing give me two minutes and I'll tell you it seems like all journalism is biased and remember then they have to keep their advertisers happy as well so you're not going to talk bad about a new medication that's giving people problems if the manufacturer of that medication sponsors your programs so in this day and age I think it's really difficult to find unbiased news nobody just gives you the facts they give you the facts with their own spin on on it and there's a great word that has to do with propaganda their own take their own spin but also you'll see propaganda even in books and leaflets we already said movies radio TV and those cool posters I must say I love those old school propaganda posters but I don't like what they did I don't like indoctrination I don't like when you mislead people but back in I don't remember which war it was was they were actually dropping leaflets pamphlets out of planes and that was a way to get the enemy to think the way we wanted them to think so imagine that instead of dropping bombs you're dropping pieces of paper with words on them are you still not convinced of The Power of Words the power of persuasion let's take a look at the different kinds of propaganda that exist one of them is name calling or stereotyping so it's taking everybody and putting them into one group saying instantly to somebody you're a racist or you're a sexist or a homophobe or a snowflake nobody wants to be pigeonholed nobody wants to be categorized but you have to create this us and them mentality it's all about dividing and conquering see it all goes back to the Roman Empire somehow we already said this uh this loaded language or also it's called generalities or virtue words and these are words as I said Freedom hope dream politicians use them a lot they say a lot but they say nothing it also reminds me of perfume commercials passion fire hope dream Freedom the new fragrance by karolina Herrera then you've got testimonials which we see every day this is Spokes people just think of Michael Jordan back in the day with Gatorade or Nike and Michael Jordan This is somebody that you look up to a well-known credible figure who's using the product and of course if young people see their Heroes their role models using it well it must be good for them too then you've got ad nauseum I see this one a lot on Instagram sometimes I just feel like I'm being bombarded by the same ad every single s Le day I don't know if that one really works I mean if their goal is to annoy you and make sure you never buy a product from them well then maybe it's working but repetition again again this way it's always at the top of your mind the next one is bandwagon and this reminds me of the expression to jump on the bandwagon you say in Spanish very similar subo and this basically creates a sense of isolation so if you're not in you're not a part of our group then you're not cool You're On The Fringe and this plays with the idea of fomo have you heard of fomo well what does fomo stand for it stands for fear of missing out people don't want to feel like they're missing out how many times have you heard that in advertising while supplies last so you want to fit in you want to be part of the group so you jump on the bandwagon another kind is plain folks this is like every man the Common Man and what they do is this way they try and show you we're just like you we're regular people it reminds me of the McDonald's commercial where you see a guy waking up on a farm and you know taking care of the potatoes and the chickens and I'm not saying that McDonald's doesn't do that but they're trying to show you we're just an oldfashioned good brand good old mom and pop we do things the way your grandparents did it we're just like you everyday people so they try and appeal to every man one that's very very big these days is fear-mongering you want to control somebody make them scared and if you scare somebody enough you can get them to take the desired action you want them to take when people are afraid they don't act rationally and there's even a whole genre of this fear porn the idea behind it is that people almost like to be scared it's almost like it turns them on it's related to the idea of Doom scrolling to scroll is des and to move up and down and doom scrolling is reading just negative stuff the end of the world the economy's gone down the tubes unemployment is at an all-time high and you're just bombarding your brain with this negative information the last one we're going to take a look at is transfer and I didn't know very much about this one but it's similar to Virtue words and generalities what you're getting the person to do here is irrationally tie their positive associations to a completely unrelated concept so you connect two things that are not really connected if you're a real Madrid fan then you support freedom and is that really a true statement it sounds nice it sounds great especially if you put a nice movie trailer voice on it if you're a real Al Madrid fan then you support Freedom Dare To Dream see it means nothing and it relies heavily on symbolism as well it makes illogical connections you're transferring one idea in their mind to another one and they're not really connected at all and we're going to talk about that in the bonus episode when we look at the master of PR PR which means public relations Edward bernes and he used transfer in his famous torches of Freedom Campaign this is where he made it socially acceptable for women to smoke he even made them look empowered but we'll talk about that in the bonus episode but one thing I realized when I was putting this episode together is there is propaganda everywhere it's not just something that happened in Nazi Germany or during war time I think we're being bombarded with more propaganda now than ever before and it's all in the palm of our hands and our smartphones something that really blew my mind is with my daughter recently we started watching some of the old Warner Brothers cartoons the same cartoons that I remembered in my head to be totally harmless free of propaganda or indoctrination well I was sorely mistaken and remember the key here is this stuff is marketed at kids their target audience is kids cartoons and in this cartoon which I'm going to play for you as we say goodbye here it's called a hitch in time it came out in 1955 and it's a classic Looney Tunes cartoon and it is literally an ad for the Air Force and you see planes and missiles they're playing the American music with the Bandstand and the waving flags and I can't believe I didn't realize it as a child but now when I see it I think oh oh my God they were trying to recruit us to the Air Force from a young age and this Looney Tunes cartoon is about John mcrogers he's a guy who dreams about his future after he has just spent four years in the US Air Force and he's got an angel and a devil so to speak on each shoulder and one of those is Grogan and Grogan is trying to convince him to stay in the Air Force to reinlist and the other character is on his other shoulder and he's trying to tell him all the advantages he would have if he returned to civilian life I don't think I have to tell you who won the debate John mcrogers reenlists so the cartoon literally tells kids young kids go to the Air Force and then when your tour of Duty is up reinlist and go for another four years I don't know I feel like again these are directed at kids they're aimed at kids and it absolutely blew my mind and I guess that's the interesting part I was being propagandized as a child and I didn't even realize it but I guess that's how it works you're not supposed to realize it but we're learning a little bit about it here on FYI let's listen to this Looney Tunes cartoon from 1955 if you want to watch it it's called a hitch in time patrons I'll share it with you on[Music] patreon this is John MC Roger Airman First Class that Blissful smile on Jon's face is because JN has reached the end of his first hitch and Jon is getting up he is now contemplating the advantages that all civilians take for granted like a solid gold jalacingo a good job and a beautiful[Music] wife and to PCH to send home to me wife poor wife no cares have I to grieve me no pretty little [ __ ] to deceive me uh here it comes the message as we go rolling hi Mac rolling home name is Grogan technical Gremlin voice class yeah yeah I know and you're here to show me why I should reinlist about all the multitudinous advantages AC cruin to the reinlist look Buster I don't know what all the trick sarcasm is about but I'm getting out of this man's Air Force capital O capital u capital T out hey you get out too wait that's different let's pick up our discharge papers together uh uh buddy are you kidding why the minute they start talking to you you'll go all soft and sign up again but I shut sit down honest I've been dreaming about getting out ever since I got in all these guys are the same pushovers wild blue yonder pushovers now then the voice thing they're going to try to do they're going to try to tell you how much better off you'll be staying in the Air Force okay just for the record let's take a look that's you and that's your reenlistment paycheck Amon voice class 4 years service 137 bucks. 59 a month and this is what the average veteran of your age is oing in civilian life 253 bucks 47 that's$15.88 more than you make Max why that's an outrage that's that's of course to be perfectly Fair the civilian does have to make a soen minor deductions from his paycheck that you don't uh like food lodging clothes higher income taxes medical and dental bills and life insurance uh minor deductions like that there well uh it's only 197 bucks a month only another thing I uh forgot to mention was that a Airman can increase the size of his check by senority advancement in rank allowances overseas Duty and flying Duty and as much as six times your monthly base pay for your first reinvestment but the civilian still makes more money sure sure in anyway the money isn't the important thing is it Grogan it's the job that counts brother you are so right there and folks that brings us to the end of this episode I sure hope you'll join us in this week's bonus episode of[Applause][Music] FYI